


War Crimes

by kangeiko



Series: Pillowtalk [2]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Community: fanfic100, M/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-15
Updated: 2007-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Londo does a bit of digging. Companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/71772">Pillowtalk</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War Crimes

Londo knows a great many things about the Narn-Centauri war. Well, both wars, really. The second one he witnessed first-hand, and the first one he studied as a small child. His father had contracted a series of appropriate tutors for the House Mollari's heir apparent, and they had spent a great deal of time and energy instructing the young Londo in the rudiments of behaviour. The first things he learned related to the proper comportment of young Centauri, including the correct dress for a variety of occasions. Given his family's limited means at the time - his marriage to House Stera's youngest girl would not be finalised for several decades yet - this meant a great deal of emphasis on the how one is to wear the priceless antique pins and cravats and other bits of wardrobe accessories, rather than which of the many dressmakers to contract.

The tutors covered mathematics and physics, of course, and biology and enough chemistry for him to pass all the required exams for the military. They also covered history, albeit in a little too much detail for the Head of House's liking. Of course, there was little they could do when their young charge showed such a genuine interest and, moreover, why would they wish to? Educated by the Academy in all of the arts and condemned to spend their days teaching table manners, who could blame them for taking an interest in a child that genuinely wanted to know?

Londo didn't want to just learn about the Centauri successes that were on his syllabus, but about _all_ of it. He wanted to know about the trade routes that had initially existed, before the Centauri invaded, and the peculiar lack of Narn telepaths anywhere. He wanted to know about the cannibalistic tendencies noted by various Centauri visitors to the place, and where the misapprehension that the Narn ate Centauri flesh had first come from. He wanted to know about the initial bombardment of Narn from above, and the final, inevitable realisation by Central Command that they could not subdue a world from above.

Finally, Londo wanted to know about the guards and the soldiers that were sent down to the planet surface. Having never left the Homeworld, when he closed his eyes he would imagine a place much like Centauri Prime, lush and green, and soldiers dressed in the only uniforms he had thus far seen. In his eyes, Centauri in the garb of the Royal Guards wandered a garden-planet, and the natives there -

_the natives there -_

The natives there were not happy.

_We had to cleanse the planet_, his tutor said somberly. _And there is only one way to accomplish that, while keeping the planet habitable. Can you think of what it is?_

Londo thought. _Kill everyone?_ He hazarded.

The tutor smiled. _But what will you do with the bodies? How will you stop them from polluting the rivers, and drowning the cities?_

Londo's brow furrowed as he thought. _Don't kill everyone,_ he decided at last. _Kill only the children. And stop them from having more children._

The tutor nodded, pleased. Londo smiled, happy to have gained his teacher's approval. They went on - strategy, tactics, operations - and moved on to geography, soon enough. Which world was conquered next, what spices and silks were made Centauri (albeit from a distant corner of the empire), what the Royal Court thought on it - on and on and on, until any other child would have thrown up his hands and demanded time to himself.

_I have always had responsibilities_, Londo once said, and it was the truth. He studied as his tutors wanted, and he learned well. One footnote in history - barely noted in Centauri texts at all - had thrown up a scandal in the Royal Court, when the censure of the Minbari was threatened. Londo did not know much of the Minbari, save their reclusiveness. Why had they emerged from hiding? What had the ground-troops done to enrage them so?

_Stop them from having children_, he had suggested to his tutor, and the Centaurum had decided to do precisely that. It was a long-view approach to the situation, when the number of Narn would have to be gradually reduced to a manageable level. Better to deal with it through birth-control, the Centaurum, in its infinite wisdom, decided. It is less visible, and less bloody, and it will lead to less resistance. And so they had planned and executed just this premise, down to the very last letter - until the Minbari had intervened and threatened action until the policy was reversed.

Policy? What policy?

Try as he might, there was no record anywhere of what policy the Centaurum had voted in then overturned so hurriedly. There was no mention of it anywhere, other than the fact that, ten years later, the birthrate was still the same but the child mortality rate had risen by 1800% in a world that doted on its offspring.

And, still, in the archives, in the files, in the texbooks - nothing. Even at Academy, later (with his father's disapproval withering his spirit a little more each day) - at Academy! The one place on the Homeworld where nothing is ever expunged - there was nothing. Whatever had been done to the Narn to make them start killing their children, the Minbari threat had stopped... and silenced. Nothing in the Empire held such records when Londo had looked, then looked again, then again.

By the time it occurred to him that he was in a position to look once more - and to perhaps break through this silence, for the sake of an itch forty years past - he found himself too busy. Always, too busy. Is this not the case? Ambassador, Royal advisor, Prime Minister - is his time not eaten up enough already?

(And did the second Narn-Centauri war not produce enough atrocities for even the most ardent history student to study?)

And, in truth...

... in truth, he had all but forgotten it himself. There. Isn't that odd? Something that had fascinated him so much as a child, it passed so easily into nothing...

"Curious," he whispered in the dark. Beside him, G'Kar was mostly asleep, his breathing low and regular. Londo had been dozing too, turned to one side, a hand against G'Kar's chest.

At the sound of his voice, G'Kar stirred. "What is it, Mollari?" He asked wearily. "What is curious?"

Londo frowned a little. His hand had been against G'Kar's chest for some time, yet the Narn had not reacted. How odd. "It is curious that you do not have much feeling here." Twice as odd, perhaps, because the torso of a Narn male had just as many nerve endings as that of a Centauri one. He knew. He'd looked it up one evening, furtively reading a biology text while Vir prattled on from the other side of the room about the Gaim ambassador's latest request for a photo op.

G'Kar sighed loudly. "Not all species are built as the Centauri, you know. This must have come as a great shock to your race, so focused are you on your own reflections..."

"Our reflections are fair enough to merit it," Londo returned automatically. His fingers wandered, almost of their own volition, to G'kar's sides, where the hide was a little thicker.

"What are you doing?" G'Kar demanded, squirming.

"And yet you are sensitive at your sides. Most peculiar, don't you think? Most bipedal species have equal, if not greater, sensitivity in the central areas of the torso." Odd, Londo thought, odd. His hand returned to G'Kar's chest, feeling the small, tight ridge of a nipple. Odd, Londo thought, odd and smooth and not at all like a nipple should be. With the artificial half-light of the dim parlour lamp still slanting through the room, it was so smooth it caught the light, yet there was the raised ridge to it, wasn't there? Almost like -

His hand moved to the other side, palm flat. Smooth, smooth, almost _slick_, in fact, and a ridge, raised vertically, this time.

Abruptly, he was wide awake and cold all over.

G'Kar was silent for a long time. "Not all Narn are the same," he said finally. "Can this exploration of yours possibly wait for a more reasonable hour, Mollari?"

_Let it drop_, Londo heard, loud and clear. And, more, from textbooks and G'Kar and himself, things no species should ever do -

_stop them from making more children //_

                                      i watched as my father died, and the pouchlings he carried starved to death, unable to nurse // 

                                                                                                        this is an abomination! the grey council will not stand idly by while - //

The birth rate, he thought, dizzy. The birth rate didn't fall, not by much, not so it was noticeable.

_Oh, but the child mortality rate rose. It rose because the Centauri are efficient in the machinery of war, so efficient that the Minbari intervened._

And, beneath his hands, scar tissue where nipples should be, something so obscene that not even the Narns could bring themselves to articulate it.

Beside him, G'Kar turned slightly into his touch, sighing a little. "Mollari?"

"Of course,"  he said faintly.

*

fin


End file.
